Bangladeshis own $5.91 billion of offshore wealth in tax havens around the world.

Cumulatively, this comes up to 1.3 percent of Bangladesh's Gross Domestic Product.

Of this amount, $5 billion are in Asian tax havens, while the rest are in European and American tax havens.

This is according to the Atlas of the Offshore World, produced by the European Union Tax Observatory. The estimates are from 2022.

In 2021, the figure of offshore wealth owned by Bangladeshis in tax havens was $8.145 billion, the highest since the beginning of the millennium. Of this amount, $7 billion alone was in Asian tax havens including Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong.

The Atlas estimated that $0.5 billion was lost in taxes as a result of the stashing of wealth offshore.

It found that the total offshore wealth invested in real estate in tax havens comes up to $0.66 billion or 0.18 percent of Bangladesh's GDP.

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Most of this real estate investment happened in Singapore and Dubai, followed by London and Paris.

"Offshore real estate is real estate that is either ultimately owned by an investor in a different country or is owned by residents through complex offshore structures that can obfuscate the identity of the real owner," it said.

A recent investigation by Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) found that 394 Bangladeshis own 641 residential properties in Dubai, whose estimated value is $225.35 million. OCCRP took the estimates from 2022.

OCCRP said that Dubai is popular because of "the emirate's inconsistent responses to requests from foreign authorities for help arresting and extraditing fugitives."

Transparency International said in a press release, "It is difficult to understand how high-profile PEPs, including officials that are under investigation or subject to sanctions elsewhere, can purchase and own these properties without being subject to scrutiny. Authorities should be able to identify suspicious cases themselves, and also share intelligence with their foreign counterparts and target assets."